I appreciate very much Andy's making his writings available for free. However, why not combining that with earning a bit, like, say, Cory Doctorow does?

That would mean making the works available under some flavor of CC license free on site, but also publishing them on Amazon in 70% royalty bracket (that probably means pricing them at $2.99) and rolling them into Select program, which makes them eligible for borrowing from Kindle Owners' Lending Library and making them occasionally free. I think that Amazon allows this kind of two-pronged distribution.

I think, just setting up a donation paypal account for starters would be the easier way if Andy wanted to do something about that.

Not that I mind whate3ver he does, after all it's his work. And I did buy the Martian on amazon two weeks ago (because I totally forgot about it...can't even remember if it had been there after I got my kindle. probably. anyway. Enjoyed rereading it a lot.

I accidentally stumbled upon a system that seems to work well. For those who want to give me a few cents, there's the Kindle version. This helps me far more than the actual money I get from it (my share is only 35 cents per copy).

What it really does, though, is cause my book to gain visibility in the Kindle system. It gets a lot of reviews and feedback. As the sales climb, the book climbs on various lists and makes it even more likely to gather more readers (once a book reaches the top 10 in a category, a lot more people see it while browsing for other books).

So the end result is lots more readers. And that's what I'm really after. A writer without readers is like a boat in a desert.

Andy wrote:I accidentally stumbled upon a system that seems to work well. For those who want to give me a few cents, there's the Kindle version. This helps me far more than the actual money I get from it (my share is only 35 cents per copy).

What it really does, though, is cause my book to gain visibility in the Kindle system. It gets a lot of reviews and feedback. As the sales climb, the book climbs on various lists and makes it even more likely to gather more readers (once a book reaches the top 10 in a category, a lot more people see it while browsing for other books).

So the end result is lots more readers. And that's what I'm really after. A writer without readers is like a boat in a desert.

That's why I recommended enrolling into Select program: the book becomes eligible for borrowing from KOLL (free for readers, you get around $2 per loan, regardless of list price), and you get to give it for free occasionally. There are several sites tracking such promotional freebies, and many Kindle owners follow them.

KDP Select won't work at all for me. Among other restrictions, when you enroll in Select, you are giving them exclusive distrubution rights. So I'd have to take the free versions down off my site. I'm just not willing to do that.

Andy wrote:KDP Select won't work at all for me. Among other restrictions, when you enroll in Select, you are giving them exclusive distrubution rights. So I'd have to take the free versions down off my site. I'm just not willing to do that.

Of course. I didn't realize that enrollment into Select requires exclusivity.